Editorial: Tight limits on farmers market wine tasting

Assemblyman Marc Levine's bill to allow wine and cider tasting at farmers markets is making fast political headway in Sacramento, but closer to home he's getting opposition. Alcohol Justice, one of the agencies formed and funded by the Buck Trust, is challenging Levine's bill, arguing that wine tasting doesn't belong at family-friendly farmers markets.

Levine is no stranger to the debate over the availability of alcohol.

In 2010, as a member of the San Rafael City Council, he voted to oppose a liquor license to a Canal area store where Alcohol Justice had opposed the permit, arguing that the area already had ample purveyors of alcoholic beverages.

Now that Levine's in Sacramento, he's been asked by farmers markets and the Wine Institute to relax state law to allow them to provide samples to shoppers. Current rules allow wineries to sell wine at farmers markets, but forbid tastings, which vintners say is a must for helping their sales.

The bill has tough limits. It only permits tasting for makers who grow 100 percent of the fruit in their products. In addition, only one winery per day can offer tastings and in an area cordoned off from the rest of the market.

And those tastes can't be more than three ounces.

Levine's bill — AB 2488 — is flying through the capital. It won approval in the Assembly, and last week was unanimously approved by the Senate Local Government Committee despite opposition from Alcohol Justice, a San Rafael-based Buck Trust-funded advocacy group.

At last week's Senate hearing, representatives of small vineyards and farmers markets stepped forward to testify for passage of AB 2488. They emphasized the tough restrictions on numbers and tastings, but said access to farmers markets could be an important retail opportunity for California's smaller wineries.

But senators also heard from Alcohol Justice and the California Council on Alcohol Problems, who opposed the bill as a small but first step toward opening farmers markets as venues for wine tastings.

Alcohol Justice said AB 2488 starts a pattern where the Legislature will likely be asked, year after year, to relax restrictions to open the way for increased wine tasting.

"We just don't think children need to see their parents drinking when they shop for fruit and vegetables," Alcohol Justice's public affairs director Mike Scippa told lawmakers. He warned AB 2488 is the "camel's nose under the tent," setting the stage for craft beer makers to seek similar permission, and for "family-friendly" farmers markets to become "open-air bars."

Alcohol Justice is right to raise concerns about how, potentially, limited permission could open the door for greater access for the tasting of alcoholic beverages at farmers markets.

That's Alcohol Justice's important role and its concerns should be a consideration for lawmakers.

But Levine's bill squarely answers those concerns by severely limiting tastings almost to the point where few markets would consider wine tasting a worthwhile addition.

The bill's tight limits on wineries, location and the small size of the tastes are far from "an open-air bar."

"Consumers want to make sure they like the wine before they make a purchase," Dan Best, a spokesman for California's certified farmers markets, told senators. "There's not a party going on at any farmers market whatsoever."

Levine's bill also leaves tastings up to the markets' managers to determine whether they would be appropriate. That's reasonable.

There are many family wineries across Levine's Marin-Sonoma counties district and his bill is aimed at helping their business. Allowing only one winery pouring small tastes at a market seems to be a modest but helpful change for small vintners.